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- "कुत्ता मेज़ पर बैठा है।"
26 Comments
"The dog sits on the table" should be accepted. I feel that "The dog is sitting on the table" is more aptly translated to "कुत्ता मेज़ पर बैठ रहा है". Correct me if i'm wrong?
458
Some verbs are not conceptualized, natively, as being possible to do in a "continuous" way. One can't be in the process of sitting. One is either sat or not-sat. I agree that a variety of English translations can be accepted, however the Hindi sentence you wrote is not idiomatic.
Unfortunately, my answer "the dog sits on the table" was marked as incorrect, which I think would be a better translation.
What if we added "every afternoon" to the sentence? In English then it would have to be "sits." If a repeated action is understood from context, would "the dog sits on the table" be expressed in a different way in Hindi?
Curious: how would one express, "while he was sitting down, someone pulled his chair out from under him." That being said, this explanation seems to he the most accurate. Basically, English (unlike most languages) now mainly reserves the present tense for habitual actions ("every week"). The result is a 1:2 relationship between a present tense (non-continuous) hindi verb construction (even if it is adjectival) and the english structures of continuous or habitual action. In most cases, therefore, both translations should be acceptable ("sits" or "is sitting"). Sorry, but 1:1 "consistency" is simply impossible. All languages are adequate for describing all thoughts and ideas, but they simply chop them up differently based on what the current grammar and vocabulary allow for (usually based on a balance of competing priorities: simplicity and accuracy).
I'm no expert, but I noticed बैठा is marked as an adjective on Duo, not a verb, maybe this would explain it?
True, sit can be used as an adjective. Here it is used before the verb not the noun.
An adjective needs not be next to a noun to be an adjective. In “you are intelligent”, “intelligent” is an adjective. That’s the structure in use here, with “sitting” instead of “intelligent”.
I'm probably getting ahead of myself here and I'm really not wanting to confuse myself even more, but I'm curious--in what situations would बैठा be used as an adjective?
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So if "कुत्ता मेज़ पर बैठा है।" must be translated as "The dog is sitting on the table", what would be Hindi for "the dog sits on the table"?
So much discussion! And I just came here to say that Duolingo should also accept, "A dog is sitting on the table", but they currently don't. I've reported it.
Can someone decide if 'betha' should be translated as sits or sitting, and keep it consistent pls.
I find that बैठा and बेटा sound very similar and end up pronouncing them the same How do I make a better distinction between the two?
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The vowel in बैठा can be said like the A in English "bat" The vowel in बेटा can be said like the AI in English "bait." Maybe not exactly, yada yada, but close enough to make the relevant distinction.
The best way to make the distinction though, is to really lean into the added air (aspiration) in बैठा, and make sure you're not putting any air on बेटा. Although I don't hear anything wrong with the Duo recording, I do find hearing the aspiration to be a bit harder to hear than, perhaps, it is with a live speaker.
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I hear the vowel in बैठा more as a the 'e' sound in 'bet'. Actually I didn't think the short 'a' in bat existed in Hindi. Certainly nobody sounds my own name, Sam, quite correctly... I always come out as Sem.
- 458
The e in "bet" and the a in "bat" are allophones in Hindi. Either works; both have the same communicative value, phonemically.
From a precise phonetic perspective, our tow English "bat"'s may differ somewhat, too. So of course, saying the sound is like "so and so" in English is imprecise but, like I said, close enough.
Whether the Hindi vowel sounds more like "bet" or "bat" actually varies across Hindi. The important thing is that this variation is not meaningful, and that either/both are meaningfully distinguished from the vowel in बेटा :) https://youtu.be/_EaX17bVcwc
